Mercy Home Mentor Helps Kids Abroad
January is National Mentoring Month. To celebrate, we are proud to share a story about a volunteer who mentors young people through Mercy Home's Friends First program, and how his commitment to service has taken him beyond Chicago and around the world.
Since 2000, Scott Barbeau, 42, has mentored at-risk kids through Mercy Home's Friends First mentoring program. In its 21-year history, Friends First has paired more than 1,000 adult volunteers with young people ages 9 to 17, and provided them with a wide range of fun activities to do around Chicago. The program is built on the simple idea that spending time with kids like these can make a lifetime of difference. Friends First mentors are all ages and come from all walks of life but are united by their concern for helping kids.
Barbeau has already enjoyed successful matches with three young people through Mercy Home's program and is in the process of being matched with a fourth. Barbeau has a true calling to help children. In part through his experience with Mercy Home, Barbeau has had the opportunity to change the lives of many young people, not just in Chicago, but around the world. The secret of his success? He listens.
Barbeau credits his experience in working with the kids and the families of kids at Mercy Home for learning to listen to the real needs of those he intended to serve. "You learn to be open and honest when working one on one with kids and you learn to let a real partnership unfold," Barbeau said.
With this critical insight, Barbeau made some dramatic changes to his own life that allowed him to spend more time serving others. First, he quit his corporate job to pursue a life of service (along with music, his other passion from which he makes his living). Then, he and two friends traveled to Mexico, where they helped in the building of orphanages. Later, they went to Zambia to create partnerships aimed at helping orphans in that impoverished African country. It was from these travels that an idea for a non-profit service organization was born.
The three friends first went to Zambia equipped only with open minds and the desire to help, but with no concrete agenda. What the three found there surprised them. They met with a relief group that works with orphans in one of the poorest places on earth, and asked how they could help. They were told that more than money or food, what was desperately needed on the ground was leadership training for those who provided services for the children. So, the three Americans, each with backgrounds in business, established their own non-profit organization. Their group forms partnerships with high-impact organizations around the world that help vulnerable children achieve their potential.
The three friends returned to Zambia to help the relief group build an orphanage, and helped improve that organization's infrastructure, budget planning, employee training and logistics so that they could better care for the children there.
Scott Barbeau has taken the message of mentoring and service to an inspirational height, carrying the mission to help children to those in need across the globe. Meanwhile, here at home, Barbeau remains committed to helping Chicago's children through the Friends First mentoring program.
For more about Mercy Home's Friends First mentoring program, click here or call 312-738-7552.
Click here to learn how YOU can make a difference.